FIXATING on whether Count Binface may be more successful in Clacton than in the fake by-election that brought Labour’s prince regent, Andy Burnham, back to parliament may well be the media’s ‘happy place’.
Far more useful to our politics, and even Burnham’s own looming tenure as PM, would be a closer examination of how Labour’s next leader is about to betray his local voters over links to the EU, just weeks after being elected.
In his victory speech after winning the Makerfield by-election, Burnham pledged a “Makerfield test at the heart of British politics,” his “touchstone” by which all his policy decisions and proposed legislation would be judged.
Yet, on Thursday, in a comment piece setting out his foreign policy principles, Mr Burnham told readers of The Times: “I want to consolidate the progress made on the existing UK-EU negotiations and make further progress quickly.”
How does Burnham imagine the voters of Makerfield, who backed Leave in the EU referendum by 64 per cent and who gave him a “final chance to change” the direction of this Labour government, will react to business as usual for this old Keir Starmer policy?
Worse, one that hands lawmaking and billions of pounds in scarce public funds to the EU.
It’s not as if the man who, mid-campaign, quickly abandoned his earlier enthusiasm for Britain rejoining the EU can be unaware of what Makerfield voters think on Brexit.
Confronted by the issue during the by-election, Burnham backtracked, saying “the last thing we should do right now is re-run those arguments”, before resolutely avoiding all mention of the topic to campaign on local issues.
Now, just days into his arrival at Westminster, Andy Burnham is limbering up to make a fundamental, unforced error not dissimilar to Keir Starmer’s rush to cut the winter fuel allowance in the early days of his premiership.
What “progress”, exactly, does he feel Starmer made in his reset negotiations that Burnham feels is worth risking this major political error?
Twelve years of fishing rights given away, estimated to cost the UK over £6bn, for only promises of deals that themselves all come with a further price.
An emissions trading deal that, according to industry estimates, has already cost the economy £5bn in higher energy costs, in a bid to avoid a far lower £800m hit in new EU carbon taxes.
Then there’s half a billion pounds in subsidy for the EU’s Erasmus scheme, while a youth experience deal looks set to cost universities another half a billion in reduced fees, for exchange programmes that will benefit far more EU students than young Brits.
Or a food standards deal to ease the transit of some goods exports that the government has admitted will add costs to farming and other businesses across the entire UK economy, whether or not they trade with the EU at all. Plus, will incur a substantial fee to the EU, speculated to be at least a billion pounds a year, for the pleasure of the EU writing our laws.
Worse, for many, that SPS deal is already casting doubt on post-Brexit measures to curb animal cruelty, if bans on foie gras, fur products, illegal puppy farm imports and live animal exports must be sacrificed to align with EU rules.
This is a deal that the OBR confirmed in its 2025 budget analysis will contribute less to UK GDP than the trade deals done with Japan, Australia, New Zealand and India, along with CPTPP membership, that were only possible thanks to Brexit. Even without, yet, accounting for those costs to the wider economy and billions of pounds in absurd EU ‘admin fees’ to write our laws.
It’s a process that, to many voters, appears much more like a never-ending, grovelling apology for Brexit from what Burnham has called Westminster’s “unaccountable state” to the EU, than any kind of beneficial closer relationship.
Given the EU reset is such a glaringly inept deal, one that harks back to past mistakes instead of signalling change, one that certainly fails his ‘Makerfield Test’, why is Andy Burnham allowing himself to be railroaded into clinging to it?
It doesn’t even deliver on the government’s desperation to foster growth. In what we now know to be classic ‘Clumsy Keir’ form, Starmer was pressing ahead with handing lawmaking back to the EU just as its remaining members condemn Brussels for over-regulating and making their economies uncompetitive, as well as criticising the EU’s emissions trading scheme for shutting down industry.
Few across the Brexit divide oppose concepts like reducing trade barriers or having a closer relationship with like-minded countries in Europe and indeed worldwide, when asked in polls. The mistake comes in how Westminster has interpreted such views, as a lodestar to hand powers and money back to Brussels, on which they seem permanently fixated.
No wonder our politics has been so volatile, whenever voters get a rare chance to express their dismay at that disingenuous misinterpretation of their views.
Postponement of the UK-EU summit planned for 22 July offers Andy Burnham a chance to pause and reflect. Who is the ‘EU reset’ really intended to serve, and is it really worth provoking an instant disconnnect with not just Reform-leaning Makerfield voters, but millions more in similar Leave-voting Labour constituencies across the country?
It cannot be smart politics to make one of his most visible early decisions as a ‘hope and change’ PM to continue a highly controversial and widely-discredited Starmer policy.
After Andy Burnham pledged “more power for the North”, he will actually make one of his first acts as prime minister be the handing of more power to Brussels.
Regurgitating this Starmer self-harm is a PR disaster that Andy Burnham can simply swerve, by declaring the EU reset fails his ‘Makerfield Test’ and quietly binning it.
To borrow from his own victory speech, this is a final chance to change. There will be no second chance.
Stuart Coster is director of the Democracy Movement and previously a co-founder of the People's Pledge campaign for an EU referendum. 'X': @Stuart Coster
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Photo of Andy Burnham and Jeremy Corbyn 1in 2017 by Sophie Brown - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58697892
